Tarantino’s New Western Called ‘Hateful Eight'; May Start Filming This Summer

Quentin Tarantino’s directing career contains a filmography which consists of different genres grafted onto one another – crime thrillers and character studies (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown); samurai flicks and revenge dramas (Kill Bill, Vol. 1 – 2); a World War II revenge movie (Inglourious Basterds); a Western revenge flick (last year’s Django Unchained)… it’s pretty clear that Tarantino has a thing for the cut and dried plot of the vengeance-focused exploitation flick.

Given Tarantino’s popularity with fans – along with his run of critical and commercial success – we’re always interested in what he’s working on next. Tarantino confirmed to Jay Leno not too long ago that his next script would be another Western, and now we have more information on what will be his ninth feature film.

THRreports that Quentin Tarantino’s next Western will be called Hateful Eight, and while one source says that the film may start production this summer, another claims that no timetable has been set. There is no official cast, but evidently Tarantino will be working with casting director Victoria Thomas, the industry veteran who casted Django Unchained (and roughly 71 other titles), and a part has been written for Basterds and Django star Christophe Waltz, which would mark his third collaboration with Tarantino.

And so far, that’s all we know. There are no details about the plot, but the title echoes (and probably is a reference to) director John Sturges’ classic 1960 Western The Magnificent Seven, a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 equally classic The Seven Samurai. Neither film has a direct revenge plot, and rather follow a group of hired guns/swords who help a group of villagers defend their community. Could Hateful Eight be the inverse of this story?

The initial news of Tarantino’s follow-up to DjangoUnchained named something called Killer Crow, which would complete a loose trilogy of exploitation/revenge movies by following a troop of black soldiers who go AWOL on an “Apache warpath” during World War II . True to form, he seems to have shelved that idea, and told Jay Leno this about his next project back in November:

“I can’t talk that much about it, but I will say one thing. I haven’t told anybody about this publicly, but I will say the genre. It’s a Western. It’s not a Django sequel, but it’s another Western. I had so much fun doing Django and I love westerns so much, that after I taught myself how to make one, it’s like ‘OK, now let me make another one now that I know what I’m doing.’”

Tarantino’s revisionist approach to the World War II action movie and now the Western genre can be divisive, but as the box office success and critical acclaim seem to prove, his genre-twisting efforts tend to strike a chord with audiences even as they keep hitting some still-raw nerves. Given Tarantino’s affinity for spaghetti Westerns, it’s safe to assume that Hateful Eight won’t be a straight Western, but rather blend in some other genre – maybe a revenge plot, even though he’s tread that ground fairly thoroughly.

What do you think of this Tarantino news? Would you like to see another Tarantino Western, or one of the other projects reportedly on his back-burner, like Kill Bill 3? Killer Crow? The Vega Brothers?